NAIROBI 1°17’11.0”S 36°49’02.0”E
GEORGINA GOODWIN ever since i was a little girl , I have been in love with the vibrant colours of our world. When I was given my first camera at age 10, I sneaked it into school and snapped grainy faraway portraits of my friends. I didn’t think about nature consciously because I was always immersed in it. Always outside, playing. Being born and brought up in Kenya, I had the childhood of dreams. I played all day in our garden, getting lost in the flower beds, the winding pathways. We did many safari trips with my family to the “game parks,” our familiar term for Kenya’s beautiful national parks. Tsavo and Shimba Hills were two of our favourites. When I was sent to school in the UK at the age of 11, my world crashed. I traded the vibrant warmth of home for damp grey skies and heavy coats. The world felt muted: grey skies, heavy coats, and quiet fields. Luckily, I could come home to Kenya most holidays, to the tropical sunshine on my face and the ways of life I have known since birth. I finally left the cold and grey after graduating with a Bachelors of Science degree in Human and Physical Geography, a multifaceted discipline that catered perfectly to my wide interest in the world. Working as a stewardess on a super yacht, I reconnected with my childhood hobby: photography. Before sailing from Cape Town to Malaysia, I invested in a simple film single-lens reflex camera with a kit lens—it so happened to be a Canon. Over three months, 6000 sea miles, and anchor stops in the Comores, Seychelles, Maldives, and Andaman Islands, my need to capture moments grew. Back in Kenya, I began work running a mobile tented camp in the Masai Mara. That was when I got a large, early Canon 10D, and my professional photography journey began. I loved being back in nature, taking camp guests out on game drives—the colours, the vastness, the sunshine. I realised I actually knew pretty much nothing about photography, so I began reading secondhand photography books. I entered two of my wildlife images into local wildlife photography contests—one was an image of cheetah brothers at sunset, the other a closeup of a lioness staring at my camera lens for a portrait—and won both. Gradually I expanded from wildlife to other genres of photography: fashion, portraits, food, and documentary. Kenya’s 2007 elections and the 2008 post-election violence that ensued were a turning point. Photography became the serious business of creating witness to a pivotal moment in my nation’s history. My images documenting the violence were short- listed for the Bayeux-Calvados War Correspondence Award. A selection of my images also toured the country as part of the Kenya Burning exhibition, to help Kenyans remember “Never Again.” I became a photographer that sought out the “hard stuff.” I took it as my duty to find underreported stories, to bring awareness to them and other important issues. Through photography, I met people I would never otherwise have met: Nelson Mandela, Sheikh Mohamed of Kuwait, billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, South African singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Chinese actress and UNEP Goodwill Ambassador Li Bingbing. I experienced exhilarating moments climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro for ActionAid and covering the visits of President Obama and Pope Francis to Kenya for Agence France-Presse. For The Guardian, I covered the inspiration symbolised by the Umoja Womens’ Village in north Kenya, and the poignant story of Sudan, the last male northern white rhino. I witnessed the despair and fragile thread of hope for a better life in 15 refugee camps across Africa for the United Nations Refugee Agency.
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MOTHER VOLUME FOUR
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